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Exhibition: Hey Siri, What am I doing?

A brief group show featuring young Korean artists based in London:

Hey Siri, What am I doing?

Safehouse 2 | 137 Copeland Rd | London SE15 3SN
30th Nov – 2nd Dec (PV Night: 29th Nov 18.00-21.00)

Siri exhibition

Hey Siri, What am I Doing?
-Keeping it real?
Hey Siri, What are You Doing?
-I was just working on my dialogue, I think I’m improving!
Hey Siri, Shut up.
-Hey You There, What are You Doing?

Online: HSC & JS
Hey Siri, What am I Doing? presents an experimental space, housing technologically inspired works by seven young artists based in London: Myungjun Lee, Sooyeon Jaekal, Daehee Lee, Eunmi Kim, Taeyoung Choi and artist duo Sangwoo Lee & Meehye Han. Utilizing the modern technology of digital media and artificial intelligence as a portal for exploring their identity in the increasingly digital-focused hyperreality, the combination of installations stimulates sensorial experience of conflicting representations of self and culture. Now we invite you to be immersed in or escape into the (hyper)reality. And we ask you to consider – in this reality, what do we gain in the expense of what we lose and what do we lose in the expense of what we gain?

The exhibition is presented and supported by The Korean Women’s International Association UK (KOWIN). The association supports and encourages the well-being of young generation of Koreans in the UK. We thank KOWIN for providing financial and administrative support and hospitality.

Offline: HSC & JS
Logged 29/11/2018

Myungjun Lee

Control + z (2018) Size: 200 x 300 cm. Audio-Visual Installation

Ctrl + z is a research project that explores the use of beauty filters on ‘selfie’ image applications used by young Koreans. The project asks if computational image tools are affecting norms of self-image and beauty and how this might be different to the photographic approaches of the past. In the installation, two screens are facing each other. One screen exhibits portraits that have been edited through beauty filters. The other screen is blank. However, when an audience stands in front of the small frame situated in front of the blank screen, un-edited portraits are revealed. 8y situating the audience in the middle of the two identical but dissimilar faces, the installation invites the audience to question their definition of self-image in the digital era.

Daehee Lee

Online Butterfly (2018) Size: Various. Video and Sound (4min 6sec) / Video Collage and Sound Sampling

The invention of the ‘digital’ — what was initially considered as a small ‘bomb’ — has become a massive ‘bomb’ that has changed our lives entirely. The lack of consistency and originality of information in the digital world has raised doubt on what was once believed to be the reality_ This doubt has both positive and negative aspects. The digital world gave us wings that allow us to cross boundaries- to liberate ourselves from the conventional and institutional ways of thought, but those who flew too close to the ‘sun,’ much like Icarus, crashed. Just as the Chinese philosopher “Zhangzai” dreamed of becoming a butterfly, we are no longer wary of crossing dangerous boundaries. Our behaviour in the online arena resembles a butterfly fluttering over flowers. Butter-flies do not simply consume nectar from flowers, they also help to pollinate flowers — similar to the way we flutter around the online space, creating new and unpredictable outcomes. ‘Online Butter-fly’ thus metaphorically characterizes our behaviour in the online space. It describes the taste and feeling of pleasure, but also the possible and perhaps imminent fall whilst floating in the digital world.

Sangwoo Lee & Meehye Han

An Opulent Wedding (2018) Size: 327 x 240 x 215 cm. Projection on Fabric Installation

Human beings are bound in blankets from the moment they are born, protected by clothes throughout their lives, and wrapped in fabric when they die. Fabric is an important means of protecting the human body, and at the same time, it is a means of fulfilling human desires and vanity. Lee and Han expressed this idea through media and fabric installations representing the current stage of their lives. This work was actually initiated and inspired by their state of mind and awaited pledge for their upcoming wedding, and they would like to announce the new beginning of their lives through this work, Their work illustrates not only the sacredness and beauty of marriage itself but also some negative emotions such as stress and strain coming from wedding planning, as well as their internal insecurities. Moreover, they point out the empty formalities and vanity surrounding wedding ceremonies in Korean society that force them to conform to formality rather than focusing on the substantial significance of marital vows, further extending the discussion to human vanity and greed.

Sooyeon Jaekal

Vacancy (2018) Size: 78 x 180 cm. Video Installation

The splendour of the city is proportional to the physical quantity of signs. Signs are shining texts, constantly read and consumed in everyday life- a visual imposition of capitalism. What is not fulfilled amidst the flood of urban signs is that of personal living space and domain, replaced and substituted by the capitalised city. The realm of life in the city takes on the appropriated form of desire, numerically processed and represented by limited numbers. The thirst for this realm and its lack thereof is transformed into and transcended within the digital virtual space. A virtual space, a domain of freedom that exhibits a comparatively wide range of activities, is an area for the expression and fulfilment of desire and resolution. The realization of fantasy in a virtual space is easy and seductive. Advertisements in this fake world are often more stimulating. `Vacancy’ is a fabulous fantasy that cannot be owned.

Eunmi Kim

Me-Time (4.0) (2018) Size: Various. Video Installation / Conceptual Performance / Experiential Experimental Research
Each of the experimential researches (4.o) are part of the self-experiment series that focus on sensory isolation in order to explore atypical, eccentric, but rather introspective methods that enable me to establish a diverse spectrum within my own comfort zone to get away from the overwhelming external world.

As people become more and more concerned with the psychological ramification of (an) overwhelming digital world, we may finally be ready to explore the real benefits of taking-a-vacation from the senses.— Meehan Crist, Postcards from the edge of consciousness.

I am a solitary being who can easily be pushed into ‘sensory overload.’ As such, Me-Time (3.0) aims to align my mind and body back into balance by reducing sensory stimuli. This is a series of self-experiments that use eccentric methods of REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy) to explore my conditions of hyperthyroidism (a hormone/stress-related disease), hypersensitivity, and meticulousness. Being isolated while experiencing contemplation and self-reflection, but remaining aware of the external world, is for me a form of mindfulness.

Taeyoung Choi

Without Politeness (2018) Size: 120 x 60 x 120 cm. Silicone hand, 3d printed hand, Arduino, PC, touch screen, motors, sensors, perspex, wooden frame.
*Collaborator: Suhyun Nam (Hand model making)

Inspired by the idea that human-to-human interactions, even those born out of politeness, will be eradicated in the future, Without Politeness functions as a Learning tool for future citizens and envisions the museum experience as a machine that the visitor operates through their hand shake; a physical-interaction-made data. With one robotic arm inputting the data of our handshakes in 2018, the other arm enacts the learned behaviour of all those who have interacted with it. Key to the work is its ironic materiality — the clammy latex of the hand, the impersonality of the metal arm — but also its performativity, with the audience forced to become a part of the piece itself.

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